What If I Disagree with My Pastor?
1) Direct answer
Stay with the Word, keep your spirit right, and handle it in God’s order. Pray, search the Scriptures, speak to your pastor privately with an open Bible, and seek peace. If it’s only preference, submit and keep unity. If it is clear doctrine or practice against the Bible and he will not receive the Word, obey God rather than men and step away quietly without causing strife.
2) Scriptural explanation
- Test everything by Scripture: The Bereans “searched the Scriptures daily” (Acts 17:11). “Try the spirits” (1 John 4:1). If any preach another gospel, “let him be accursed” (Galatians 1:8–9).
- Respect the office and approach rightly: “Obey them that have the rule over you” as they watch for your souls (Hebrews 13:17). “Rebuke not an elder, but intreat him as a father” (1 Timothy 5:1). Don’t receive accusations lightly—“before two or three witnesses” (1 Timothy 5:19).
- Handle it in order: Go to him “between thee and him alone” first (Matthew 18:15). If needed, take witnesses, then the church (Matthew 18:16–17). “Let all things be done decently and in order” (1 Corinthians 14:40).
- Keep unity when it’s not sin or false doctrine: “Endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3).
- Separate if the Word is rejected: “We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). “Mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine…and avoid them” (Romans 16:17). “A man that is an heretic after the first and second admonition reject” (Titus 3:10). “Can two walk together, except they be agreed?” (Amos 3:3).
3) Simple clarifying logic
- God sets pastors to feed the flock, but the Bible is the absolute. A true shepherd points you to the Word, not away from it.
- If your disagreement is about taste, timing, or non-essential procedure, lay down your preference and keep peace.
- If the issue is clear Scripture—who will you follow, a man or the Word? If a leader asks you to do or believe what the Bible denies, your loyalty belongs to Christ.
- Don’t gossip, don’t rally people, don’t split the church. Speak face to face, with Scripture, in meekness. If there’s no agreement around the Word, step aside quietly and keep your heart clean.
4) Short reinforcing statement
Stay humble, stay Scriptural, and keep the sweetness of Christ. God defends His Word and guides the sincere who put the Bible first.
Ask a Follow-up Question
What did the Laodicean Church Age (our age) Angel (- messenger) Say about this?
Ranked passages from the local William Branham sermon and Church Age Book database. Relevance is relative, not a statement of doctrinal certainty.
Trying to do God a service without it being His will
65-0718M §64
...rilled into them: "Why, these bishops said this, and this said this; this said this." You show them right here in the Word of God where it's "thus saith the Lord." "But our pastor..." I don't care what your pastor says. I don't care what I say, or anybody else says. If it's contrary to God's vindicated Word, the hour, the time, the message, and so forth, forget it! Stay away from it. And I've got to stand before every one of you in the day of judgment, and you know that. And little would I say that, knowing I'm an...
Questions and Answers, Part 3
64-0830M §61
...so much prestige about a man. Here's a bishop setting here, general overseer; he says anything, what's the little fellow going to say? He's afraid to say anything. "I agree with you. Yeah, that's right! Uh huh! Yes, Bishop, or Presbyter, you're... That's exactly right." He agrees with him. Here, let's take an alcoholic out here on the street, that---an ordinary citizen pass down the street and say, "The old bum, nothing to him." Take him down here, put him on the police force, and put a badge on him, and a gun on h...
Perseverance
62-0608 §94
...f the people on earth ever heard Him. Look what heard John to make preparation, see. It's the elected that hears it. That's all. That's right. "No man can come to me except my Father draws him first. And all the Father has given me will come." That's right. Now, I believe that there's a church coming into that perfection, that ministry of perfection, where the offices, where apostles, prophets, teachers, pastors, evangelists for the perfecting of the church, them pastors, and teachers, and so forth---will be so wit...
Questions and Answers
61-0112 §182
Remember, your laity sometimes tries to explain things and do things. It's best that you instruct them not to do it. And if somebody wants to know something, let them come to one of the ones that's instructed to do it. Say, well, now, like somebody would say, "Hey, they tell me, you over at your church believe in eternal security." Now, you better watch. You'll probably get in a bigger mess than you ever was in, you see, and make him worse off than ever. Say, "I tell you what. If you'll come over and ask our pastor...
Water baptism
59-0329M §43
Therefore, it is my convictions... No disregarding to people that wants to be sprinkled, poured or immersed, in Father, Son, Holy Ghost; that's deliberately up to you, my dear brother, sister. I would not disagree with you; I just... You are God's servant. But, to me, I must be faithful and true to the Bible. Therefore, Paul commanded people that had been baptized some other way besides the name of Jesus Christ, and constrained them to come and be rebaptized again in the name of Jesus Christ. To preach that same go...